Pakistan: Musharraf disqualified from running in May election

Election officials have blocked former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf from running for a parliamentary seat in May.

Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf speaks during a discussion on 'US-Pakistan Relations' organized by the Atlantic Council's South Asia Center in Washington, DC, on November 10, 2010. (JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images)

Election officials have blocked former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf from running for a parliamentary seat in May.

He had been given initial approval to run for a seat in Chitral, but an election tribunal rejected that application today, BBC News reported. Previously, judges disqualified him from running in Karachi, Islamabad and Kasur.

Musharraf’s petition to run for office was challenged because of actions he took when he led Pakistan, including declaring a state of emergency in 2007, the Associated Press reported.

"We will challenge (the ruling) in the Supreme Court to show the world (the) biased attitude of the judiciary against Musharraf," Musharraf’s lawyer, Ahmed Raza Qasoori, told CNN.

Musharraf grabbed power in a bloodless military coup in 1999. He served as Pakistan’s president until 2008. After resigning his post when his supporters lost parliamentary elections, he spent five years in exile in London and Dubai.

Musharraf returned to Pakistan in March, announcing he would run for office and also deal with several court cases pending against him, CNN reported.

In three separate cases, he is accused of illegally deposing 62 judges during a period of emergency rule; not doing enough to protect former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated on Dec. 27, 2007; and ordering the killing of Balochistan tribal leader Nawab Akbar Bugti in 2006, according to CNN.